The Fairest Way To Elect A President

For voters in a large majority of states, the presidential campaign takes place on electronic media.

The major-party nominees are pushed by the imperatives of the winner-take-all system of apportioning electoral votes into fighting it out in person in a dozen or so battleground states. Voters in the other 38 are pretty much taken for granted.

National Popular Vote translation: Regardless of how Connecticut citizens vote, we want to give the Connecticut citizens' electoral votes to whoever the other 49 states vote for. So, if this was in place in 2004, Connecticut's electoral votes would have gone to Bush...even though...

Fortunately, there's an antidote that fits with our constitutional traditions and is making slow progress toward acceptance: National Popular Vote — the appealing idea that after everybody's vote is counted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the presidential candidate with the most votes wins.

National Popular Vote advocates were back in Connecticut recently, this time to press their case with Republican leaders, most of whom have been cool to the concept.

We hope some minds are changed this year. The legislature will consider the issue. Connecticut should be among the states joining the National Popular Vote compact.

Four times in our history, most recently in 2000, a candidate has won the presidency while losing the popular vote. Such outcomes threaten the democratic principle of majority rule.

Under National Popular Vote, each state joining the compact agrees to give its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. The compact takes effect only when enacted by states together possessing a majority of electoral votes — 270 of 538, or enough to elect a president under the present system.

This is more in keeping with the treasured one-person, one-vote concept — and it would guarantee active campaigning by the party nominees in states they now fly over.

Data from the National Popular Vote organization showed that President Obama campaigned in only eight states after being renominated in 2012. Mitt Romney visited just 10 after the Republican convention. The two tickets had 253 campaign events after their conventions — all in just a dozen states. Two-thirds of post-convention political advertising was bought in only five states.